A Brewery and a Honey Museum

I finally decided to get out and about and start exploring some more of my surroundings. I meet a new friend Jeannie and we have a lovely day to go out on a scoot. It’s been difficult to find travel information for Taiwan in English. Luckily my friend Jeannie can read and speak Chinese. She looked in her travel guide and we decided to go to the Green Tunnel.

On the way I saw a sign for the Fortune Brewery and felt it would be an appropriate detour. The brewery had a small eclectic museum. At first it seemed very normal with old machinery and tools to show how liquor use to be made. Jeannie was able to translate the posters for me, which was very helpful. The next room was filled with ancient containers for liquids. Jeannie was very excited because she was explaining to me that most of the items was about 2000 years old. Many of the containers were for the emperor. Some of the containers were for drinking and others were for simply holding the liquid. It is unclear to me if these items were specifically for liquor or if they could also be used for things like tea or water.

As we walked into the next room their were two suits of armor. It wasn’t even ancient Chinese armor, it was medieval armor. Why medieval armor was in a Taiwan brewery, I have no idea. Jeannie and I finally decided that the owner must be very rich and they must be apart of his personal collection. The room was also filled with bottles of different kinds of liquor from around the world. Some of the bottles were really cool and had lots of different shapes.

We were able to taste some of the liquor at the end of the tour. It was kind of like vodka with a bit of rice and barley taste to it. They also had a coffee liquor which tasted mostly like coffee with a lot of liquor added to it. I don’t really recommend this one.

We then scootered on to the Green Tunnel and the Honey Bee Museum. As expected the museum was all about bees and honey. I probably would have learned a lot if I could read Chinese. I decided not to force my friend to read all the posters for me and instead resorted to basic understanding based on pretty pictures. Last year I discovered that honey can taste different depending on the flowers that the bees pollinate. This makes since after thinking about it, but prior to then I had only had honey from the grocery story that comes in the bear jar. The museum had lots of honey products to buy. Of course honey, which we were allowed to sample, honey liquor, honey vinegar, honey pollen (for tea or ice-cream), honey tea, honey cookies, ect.ect. It was all things honey, which really isn’t surprising when you consider the title.

The Green Tunnel is simply a street that has large trees on each side that creates a green tunnel look, I was a bit confused and called it the Green Mile all day long. As I should have guess the green tunnel was another market. Taiwanese people love markets and they really LOVE to eat. They really don’t understand the phrase ‘I’m full’ and will continue to try to feed you no matter how much you protest. I did see a few things I haven’t seen before. Like rides on a cart pulled by an ox.